Best Online Business Ideas 2013

The top 4 Online Business Ideas To Make Money Online in 2013

If you have read through our home page, you’d know that hundreds of thousands of individuals in Australia make extra passive income from home based business or working on a part-time business around their full time employment.

The internet explosion has made your ability to create and ongoing passive income well within reach and quite literally, the only thing between those that are cashing in on the most lucrative online business ideas and those that are not is action (or a lack thereof). Speaking of action…

The absolute truth is that most people start a side business or second income stream only regret one thing – and that’s not starting earlier.

So if you’re still in the “been thinking about it” boat and are ready to set sail on your own online business, read on for our top online business ideas for 2013!

Just before the list though, if you have looked around at some other websites you will probably see some sites with massive lists of online business ideas ranging from a dozen to over 50 different ideas.

The absolute reality is that the bulk of those ideas are padding to make the article on those websites appear more worthwhile.

At the heart of any well-written internet business idea article should be the following 4 ideas, because they are by far and away the best internet business ideas that you can take advantage of in 2013.

So, here is the list:

Idea 1: Sell other people’s products or services for a commission

This is generally known as Affiliate Marketing. The simplest definition of affiliate marketing is that you promote products that other companies or individuals have created and you make a commission for making the referral. Generally this is done via a personal website or blog. We cover more about Affiliate Marketing over at this page.

Keys To Success:

Know how to build a website

Average or better writing skills

5-15 hours per week time availability

Idea 2: Selling Online/E-Commerce Store

There are plenty of ways to sell a product or service online, be those physical products or digital products (like an e-book or information guide). For example, we could put a small price on any of the “How To” Guides that we cover on this page and we’d make 100% of the sales revenue – we don’t, but we could ;-).

If you are crafty, you can make items and sell them on a website such as Etsy.com, eBay or even just through Facebook.

You could start an e-commerce website and import goods to then sell at a profit online, or use a platform such as eBay to achieve the same.

Keys To Success:

Craft skills

Sales skills (as you will inevitably need to speak with people and perform some form of “sales process”). If you are new to sales that’s fine – Check out our free “How To” guide on how to improve your sales skills for free in less than 30 minutes!

Around 5-15 hours per week (sufficient time to both make your items, promote it and deliver it to your buyer).

Knowing how to build a basic website helps as it allows you to promote your product, however you can also do this very simply through a Facebook for business page which we cover in this free Facebook “How To” guide.

Idea 3: Creating mini websites

Mini websites, or Niche websites, have been a hot way to make money for a number of years and we cover this in more detail on this page.

You can actually make fantastic passive income through creating small websites around niche topics. The sites I build are generally around 10-20 pages of content so not much at all. I personally have a goal to build 35 small websites by the end of 2013 that make an average of $50 each per month.

To give you an idea of the time this takes, I allocate 10-20 hours per website depending on their size, so this year my goal of 1 site per two weeks is quite easy to achieve in 5-10 hours per week. I plan to pay some people to do some of the work down the track too.

However, for those of you that enjoy the numbers, even a site that takes 20 hours of personal time to build, and hits the $50 per month in earnings mark makes $1800 over 30 years giving a return of $90 per hour for you to sit at home on your computer and create a small website…

I currently have 12 mini websites now in various stages (not enough hours in the week to complete them all in the time I’d like haha), but I predict that my best performing site will top $100 on its own this month (January 2013) and the site is probably only 30% developed to where I want it to get. It could easily become a 4 figure monthly earner.

This is not life changing income form one site, but even 35 sites earning $50 per month is nice passive income that can be used to invest elsewhere.

How do you make money by creating small websites?

There are many ways, one of them being Affiliate marketing which was covered above. The site I mentioned above that is on track for $100 in monthly earnings is one that I will eventually sell products from and make affiliate commissions from.

The primary way to make money through mini websites as an online business idea is though Google Adsense. Adsense is an advertising program where Google completely manage the advertising process on your behalf.

You place a snippet of code on your own website that triggers adverts for other business to display on your site and when people click on those adverts, Goggle pays you a percentage of that revenue (estimated at around 60%). It’s a great way to make money because it is completely “hands-off” for you.

Idea 4: Blogging and building a larger websites

This Home Business Hub website is essentially an expanded blog and a blog, or weblog, is essentially just a form of website where you write regular updates (known as posts) surrounding the topic of your blog.

For example, the topic of this website is about home business and how to make money from home. We break the diverse topic of home based business into three categories:

Home businesses where you can create or sell products or services

Making money online through online businesses

Network marketing/mlm and party plan businesses.

An example of a more targeted topic would be just focusing on “making money online” for example and there are plenty of blogs that cover this topic (that’s not to say there’s not much room for you to start also).

Starting a blog or website of your own is one o four top recommended online business idea for 2013.

You can start a blog for less than $80 (your only initial costs are around $9 to buy a domain name (the website address of your blog) and pay for it to be “hosted” (which, if you’re new to this, is simply somewhere that hosts your website so that it is live on the internet).

The hosting can actually be paid monthly with no lock-in contract so you can get started for less than $20.

Your blog or website will become your internet business platform. For example, at the time of writing this article we have over 6000 individuals visit this website each month wanting to know more information about making money from home. Soon enough, we will be able to convey our messages and knowledge to over 100,000 people every year in Australia and that is quite remarkable concept from a website that is only 6 months old.

Being able to communicate with 100,000 or more people is like us being able to broadcast our message to people interested in the topic of earning money from home to a packed-out MCG stadium whenever and however we like. Very powerful when you think about it.

You can learn all of this from one brilliant training program that I got involved in mid last year

Not made a website before? No problems, the program includes a custom website builder that has been purpose-made to help beginners build websites that make money fast

It comes with a keyword research tool where you can research the best types of products to sell, and the best ways to make money

You get 3 done-for-you websites each month… Seriously… You get sent all the page text, the method of making money, instructions on how to make money from it… the lot… All you do is copy and paste

Ongoing training and support from Adam’s team - send in your new website and they will review it and give you tips. If you have questions about anything to do with your online business you can send those question in to be answered also

Ongoing weekly training webinars that cover the latest in internet marketing and internet business

If you are serious about making money online, give the $1 trial a go. I did and I’ve not looked back since.

How can you turn a blog or website into a lucrative online business?

The short answer is to fill it with useful content so that visitors become long-term visitors who keep coming back and then learn how to generate more ongoing new visitors to your site (this can be as easy as a Facebook status update which anyone can do!).

You can make money from your blog or website in the same ways covered above in the mini websites summary (affiliate marketing, advertising) and also by selling your own products.

A major benefit to a personal website is your ability to draw in visitors for multiple related internet searches to a central point to then turn those visitors into revenue form your online business.

What I mean by this is that if you were to just setup a mini website about “exercise bikes” for example, you could build a great ongoing residual income through affiliate marketing by reviewing all the different types of exercise bikes and then directing them to online retailers such as Amazon.com.

However, you could take that mini website idea and turn it into a larger website or blog about home exercise equipment with a section on exercise bikes. You could review treadmills, dvd fitness programs, free weight equipment or anything else related to home exercise and fitness.

What you would probably find is that some of the people that originally searched for “exercise bikes” on Google and came through to your website actually end up buying something totally different but still related to home exercise, which you get a commission on.

Why start a blog or website of your own?

It goes without saying that you are highly likely to require a website to make money through an online business. Every business needs a website, really.

Specifically for your internet business, your personal website or blog can become quite lucrative both directly and indirectly.

As an example of how powerful this can be for you, we are involved in a number of businesses both online and offline and this website is central to many of those. We make money from this website through advertisements, affiliate marketing and referrals through to our other businesses.

Plus, there are a few other intangibles such as being able to showcase our skills and knowledge which helps when people that are looking to do business with us are “researching” us online – e.g. they come to this site and see that we have some solid skills in business.

As just one example of a way that this website directly helps our overall business ventures, we cover our featured network marketing opportunity for 2013 within this site and receive anywhere from 30-60 enquiries on autopilot each and every month from people who would like further information about the opportunity available to them.

Lead generation is key to any business and if you have been in business or network marketing before you would understand how lucrative this can be.

Although this website is not specifically about that one business opportunity, it plays a crucial role in building that business through connecting us with people that we would never otherwise be able to reach.

What are the “boom” topic ideas for online business?

Three categories stand out from the rest because they are highly searched for online by quite motivated individuals that are ready to spend money. They are:

Wealth – anything to do with making money online, investing, getting out of debt or saving money

Relationships – Connecting with a new partner, divorce issues, family advice, romance etc.

Some great news for you if you are just starting out is that you probably have a level of experience in one of these areas OR interest in those areas where you can grow a website and learn at the same time.

How to structure your online business:

I like diversity and to have the flexibility to channel my energy into projects that I am motivated to work on at any one time. If find that my motivation tends to go through peaks and troughs where I will be motivated to create content for this site on some days whereas others I prefer to focus on creating mini-websites.

One thing you may like to consider is gradually building multiple online streams of income and therefore having many smaller sub-businesses within an overall internet business. For example, you might have a few dozen mini-websites, an e-commerce site and a larger blog or website.

Each segment of your overall online business may have similar content or totally different content and that is a fantastic benefit of making money online – it is so diverse and because of the low overheads, you can have multiple projects on the go at any one time if you wish. It’s not like a traditional business where you have rent, staff and enforced deadlines to worry about – you work on your own terms!

At the end of the day, like I said at the start of the article, the difference between those that are making great residual income online and those that are not is that some people just took action quicker than others. The doers get while the thinkers think.

My advice to anyone evaluating online business ideas in 2013 is to jump right in and have a go. For less than $80 you’re on your way with a personal website.